build a winning conference site with cod and drupal

Build a Winning Site with COD and Drupal

John CarioneAcquia, Inc.Senior Director, Solutions

Ezra GildesgameAcquia, IncProduct Manager

Jeff MannOnline DirectorEnergy Action Coalition

What is a Drupal Distribution?

• A preconfigured Drupal site out of the box.

• Technical Components:

• Modules

• Theme(s)

• Configuration

• Views, Content types, etc.

Drupal: A Comprehensive Platform

Commerce

Content Community

Key COD Features

• Create personalized custom session scheduling• Smooth registration/checkout workflows• 1-click Conference administration menus• Session moderation and speaker contacts• Robust mobile application support• Display a robust configurable event schedule, with multiple

tracks.• Execute automated sponsorships• Easy Birds of a Feather Scheduling

Customizable Scheduling

Registration Workflow

1 – Click Conference Administration

Session Moderation

Every DrupalCon since Chicago 2011

...and most DrupalCamp sites

Codestrong

•Attendees: ~4,000•Focus: Appcelerator’s mobile app framework•Location: San Francisco•Built by: GVS & Advomatic

EORTC•Attendees: 300 •Presenters: 23 Sessions: 5•Focus: Curing cancer (Communication of clinical cancer

research with oncologists and health professionals)•Location: Brussels, Belgium

Power Shift 2011

Jeff MannOnline DirectorEnergy Action Coalition

Energy Action Coalition

• Founded in 2004

• Coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice organizations working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement.

• Work with hundreds of campus and community groups, dozens of state networks, and hundreds of thousands of young people nationwide

• Rapidly growing movement achieving significant victories at the local, state, and national levels in the United States and Canada.

Power Shift 2011 Conference

• Third national summit hosted by EAC

• Brought over 10,000 young people to Washington, DC to train, launch campaigns, and take bold action to create a clean energy economy

• Largest grassroots organizer training in history

Challenges with Previous Systems

• Previously used a mishmash of one-off sites, CRM sign-up pages, google docs, and third-party event tools (RegOnline)

• Lack of flexibility for registration workflow and group registration, required workarounds that burdened attendees and staff

• Did not meet needs for logistical coordination such as volunteer recruitment and capacity planning for session space

• Limited ability to engage attendees before and after the conference

• Essentially recreating the wheel for each conference

Implementation Goals of PowerShift2011.org

• Custom registration workflow including group registration options

• Automate tasks such as volunteer recruitment, food preferences and housing/ride shares which can otherwise overwhelm limited staff capacity

• Community features to keep our network engaged before and after the conference

• Reusable for future conferences and events

Group Registration

• Many attendees come in groups through their school or other organization

• Needed to allow groups to signup and pre-pay without requiring names for all attendees ahead of time

• Solution: Using uc_coupon module, allowed group leaders to purchase and distribute a group code which could be used for individual registrations, and allowed group leaders to manage the attendees in their group

Handling Last Minute Room Changes

• Problem: Since the paper programs had to go to print before we could get all the room assignments figured out.

• Powershift printed the id's of the sessions instead so that people could match it up with room numbers on the mobile site or by texting AGENDA [nid] into our SMS platform

COD Mobile – Power Shift• Login Form

• Redirect to authenticated user home page

• Twitter Link:

• Simple link to Twitter mobile

• News

• Top 2 or 3 stories

• MySchedule

• Specific mobile page for show time, session title, room.

• Sponsors:

• Sponsor logos

• Sessions:

• Simplified sessions view

• Public access to view sessions

COD Mobile – Power Shift

• News or Blog Landing

• Content preview, title/author, and posts

• Location:

• Static Maps

COD Mobile – Power Shift

Results: Community Engagement

• At registration, each attendee received a user account allowing them to connect with each other, utilize the site's ride share, housing board, and agenda tools, and post to the community blog

• Re-branded the site as WeArePowerShift.org - using the conference as a springboard to launch a new grassroots-driven online community for the youth climate movement

• 962 blog posts by 316 authors since the conference - not possible with hosted/non integrated solutions

Power Shift and COD Demos

Ezra GildesgameAcquia, Inc.Product Manager